Antonio Feria grunted something unintelligible and shuffled his feet on the hard-packed dirt floor. He had several feet with him, pig’s feet bought cheap from the Santa Catalina market. They were worn and bedraggled from much shuffling in the courtyard dirt.
“What choice do I have?” he demanded passionately. “The fact is, he’s got the Treachery Card. You know the penalty for failure to obey a reasonable request for treachery when backed up with the Card.”
“Well then,” Miranda said, “it seems we have no choice. But how will we get him past the guards?”
“It will be all right—we have given him Giovio’s identity card.”
“But Father, Giovio is no more than five feet tall.”
“So this one will have to stoop. And you will have to waggle your hips at the guards, a thing you know well how to do, as many of the neighbors have told me. You must also teach him how to shuffle.”
Miranda turned to Harold. “Come with me, then. We will see what can be done.”
“In a moment,” Harold said. He turned to Albani. “Well, here I go.”
“Do you remember the layout of the villa? We didn’t have much time to study the blueprint on the train, what with that mixup over the sandwiches and then that ridiculous snake charmer.”
“Yes, I’ve got it,” Harold said. “Do you really think this will work?”
“Of course it will work. He won’t suspect a thing until you drill him. Do you remember how to activate the chameleon suit? Have you got your gun? Is it loaded?”
“Yes, yes,” Harold said. “Where will you be?”
“I’m going back to the tavern,” Albani said. “I will drink black coffee and chew my fingernails until you come to tell me you’ve done it.”
“Or until somebody else comes and tells you I haven’t done it.”
“Don’t talk like that, it brings bad luck. Good luck, Harold. As we say in show business, break a leg.”
Miranda came up and took Harold’s arm. “Come,” she said in her harsh, oddly feminine voice.
44
“No,” Miranda said, “your back must bend more, your shoulders must hunch up, and your feet must make sliding noises as they slide over the floor.”
Miranda had taken Harold to her bedroom, a small hut exactly twenty yards from her father’s house— the distance prescribed by custom for marriageable peasant girls with no strong religious leanings. Here she was trying to teach him the Peasant Shuffle. He could not hope to master it all in a night, of course; at the Peasants’ School in Zug they had spent an entire semester on Cringing alone. Thank God Harold would not have to learn the finer points by which exact degrees of social status are indicated, since it was unlikely that he would meet anybody. And since it was night, his postural slopitude would probably go unremarked by the drunken bodyguards in their double-breasted pinstripe suits who lounged around the outside of the villa smirking and smoking cigarettes and passing remarks to women.
“Is this any better?” Harold asked, bending over and hunching his shoulders.
“You look like a football player about to make a tackle.”
“How’s this? Better?”
“Now you look like a gutshot bear ready to kill anyone who comes within his reach.”
Harold straightened up and stretched. “Puts a kink in your back, this Cringing.”
Miranda nodded, admiring, despite her previous resolve not to, Harold’s large, solid, manly presence. Capriesti dil dnu! she thought, the ancient peasant oath coming easily to this well-studied girl. He was an attractive one. She looked at him a moment longer than necessary, then turned away. A moment later she was not surprised to find him standing very close to her, the great muzzy male presence of him so near that the smell of sweaty masculinity, combining with the fragrance of jasmine and bougainvillea borne on the dark, slow-moving night air of the dreaming tropical island, was more than merely discomfiting.
“How soon do we go to this banquet?” Harold asked her after a heart-stopping pause.
She appraised him frankly, the crackling electric depths of her dark eyes flashing a challenge that was as unanswerable as it was indecipherable, a signal as ancient and ambiguous as life itself.
“If we show up in an hour that’s plenty of time,” she said, her lips forming the words with a precision that argued a hidden languor.
“Then we might as well make ourselves comfortable,” Harold said, lying down on the bed.
Miranda hesitated but a moment. It was perhaps her own acknowledgment that she was bidding farewell to virginity—a moment of importance for a woman each time it occurs. Damn him and his seductive clumsiness! she thought. Then she fought no longer the overriding impulse that was perhaps as close as she could come to the inner truth of things and sank down beside him on the bed with that weakness which was her hidden strength. “You sweet-talking bastard,” she said, her lips sliding down the long hard straight pointer of his nose to the desired target of his mouth.
45
In a world without taboos against sex, drunkenness, narcotics, or murder, it is difficult to find something to do at a party that you don’t do all the time anyhow. Novelty was the eternal problem of ambitious party-givers on Esmeralda.
In ancient Rome, your typical wealthy party-giver, as deficient in prudery as his present-day Huntworld counterpart, might serve the guests such rare and indigestible fare as peacock tongues stuffed with truffles and served on a bed of chilled chopped slave fat, as has been actually recorded in a papyrus found at Herculaneum.
The modish Roman dinner guest was expected to stuff this stuff down enthusiastically and then rush to the vomitorium to chuck it all up, wipe his mouth, take a pee, and get ready for the next course.
But of course in many ways your ancient Roman could not be considered truly sophisticated.
The search to find something shocking to do at a party was always a problem for Louvaine, whose desire to outrage the bourgeoisie would not have been out of place among the Dadaists.
Since nothing was forbidden in Esmeralda, the modalities of astonishment had to be reversed, the law of paradox invoked, and titillation turned into an intellectual exercise. This was the spirit in which Louvaine created the now-famous reverse strip tease.
This perverse pleasure was performed in the large dining room, immediately after the coffee and sherbets. Louvaine’s guests were seated at tables arranged in a horseshoe, or, more prosaically, a U. Around the outside the servants circulated, bringing plates of food, replenishing wineglasses, serving out lines of cocaine (still popular despite the fact that the drug’s potency—though not its price—had mysteriously vanished shortly after it was made legal in the United States).
The servants were all peasants from the local village, dressed now in their holiday dirndls and lederhosen. Among them a hypothetical observer might have noticed one rather larger than the others, whose clumsiness was outstanding even for a peasant. This peasant, or whatever he was, had a large bulge under his Tyrolean jacket; but perhaps it was only a bottle of wine he had squirreled away for the delectation of his boorish buddies later in the village tavern. Or it might have been something more sinister: a monstrously swollen tumor, for example, of the sort peasants in outlying areas are always displaying to visiting cameramen. It might even have been a Smith & Wesson in a shoulder holster.
At this moment all eyes were drawn to a naked young lady who entered the room and got up on the little stage set in the middle of the horseshoe or U of tables. She carried with her a shiny Samsonite suitcase on wheels, and this drew a round of polite applause. But no one was really very interested. Many of them had seen suitcases before, even ones with wheels.
But then she undid the clasps with a lascivious touch, revealing within a full wardrobe of clothing. Then a murmur ran around the diners, because they perceived that this girl was going to put clothes on, and this was something few of them had ever seen performed in public before.
Slowly, tantalizing, the girl drew on bra and
undies and stockings. Interest became more intense as she paused over her choice of a dress, finally drawing on a fine tawny silk creation that revealed the luscious curves she had just concealed. The audience murmured in mounting excitement, whether real or feigned it was impossible to tell.
Everyone knew that, theoretically, it was possible to reverse the sweet mounting curve of the erotic and to achieve excitement through the intellectual magic of concealment. The trick in this, as in so much else, was simply in getting yourself to feel what you knew was appropriate.
Even the most insensitive got into the spirit when it came time for the reverse-strip-tease artist, now fully and daringly clothed in an outfit that included shoulder-length white gloves, to put on her fur coat. The guests could tell that something aesthetic and intellectual was going on and they were determined to wring it of its full value, whatever it was.
There was tumultuous applause when the girl finally drew a blue Russian sable around her shoulders, bowed, and left the stage. Louvaine had done it again.
The party ended soon after that. People wanted to get home early because tomorrow was a big day. It was the day of the fights in the Coliseum, the Trafficants, the Suicide Clowns, and the Big Payoff, the conclusion of which would mark the start of the Saturnalia.
Gaily the guests drove off in their supercharged limousines. A little later, the servants left in their underpowered Fiats. Louvaine had already retired to his bedroom, preparing for an early start back to the city in the morning. The guard systems went on automatically, the house lights faded, and it was night.
46
Night lay all around Louvaine’s villa, dark and mysterious, all-pervading, implacable, suave in its sightless insinuations. The landscape, dimly illuminated by starshine and by a thin sliver of new moon, revealed shaded clumps of trees against a gray background.
Still darker was the interior of Louvaine’s villa. Inside, in the scullery adjoining the kitchen, a shadow stirred among other shadows. A vagrant streak of lightning, unusual at this time of year, revealed, through the heavily meshed window, a number of potato sacks piled in a corner. One of them was moving.
Harold stood up and took off the potato sack. He had previously discarded his peasant waiter’s uniform and was now clad in the chameleon suit which Albani had managed to find at the last moment in his size.
The chameleon suit, also sometimes called the ninja suit, or traje de invisibilidad, was a considerable improvement over the green-and-brown camouflage suits of earlier times, which were really effective only if you happened to be standing in a deciduous forest at dusk. The chameleon suit provided concealment for all backgrounds and decors.
Basically it consisted of a glass-fiber television screen cut and shaped by technician-tailors into a tight-fitting jumpsuit with hood and mask. The photon-mimetic material of which it was composed, through the miracle of fiber optics and laser tailoring, was capable of taking on the hues and colors of whatever background happened to be behind it.
The chameleon suit was most effective at night, of course, since black is an easy match. Against bright backgrounds, the color matching was sometimes off by five or ten spectrum-lines. Sometimes there were unexplained flashes of cold blue light, which could be embarrassing if you were trying to cross a plain background.
Fine adjustments for color had been built into the suit, of course. The one Harold wore was a new model with automatic switching for matte or gloss.
Harold moved quietly through the darkened living room, his suit taking on the patterns of the light and shadows, creating an effect like a ripple crossing the room. His gun, the faithful Smith & Wesson, was in his hand.
He heard a low growl and stopped. Looking across the room through his infrared detecting goggles, he saw the unmistakable image of a Doberman pinscher. By the angry curve in its spine Harold suspected that this was one of the famous KillKrazy strain, feared by everyone including their owners.
No one had told Harold about the Doberman. He didn’t want to shoot another dog. And, too, there was the fact that it was difficult to shoot accurately in the dark even with infrared goggles.
The Doberman came over and sniffed him. Then it made a small sound in its throat like an author trying to collect his thoughts and lay down at Harold’s feet.
Harold learned only later that it was Antonio Feria’s dog, not Louvaine’s, and that Feria had given the dog the do-not-kill-intruder-tonight command, but in his surly way had neglected to tell Harold this. A typical pointless peasant joke.
Feria hadn’t deactivated his dog out of love for Harold, but because it was the law. A Huntworld high court had recently ruled that the treachery of a human may not be subverted by the loyalty of an animal which he owns but leases to someone else.
Harold went past the recumbent beast and crossed the living room. With the aid of his infrared glasses he was able to skirt the potentially noisy bric-a-brac set precariously upon rickety tables. He tiptoed around Louvaine’s roller skates, left carelessly on the floor. Needle points of light from pinhead spots set in the ceiling caught glittering winks of blue from the pistol in his hand. The air was warm and faintly scented with roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and Havana cigars: the smells of a good party. Ahead of him was the doorway to Louvaine’s bedroom.
Harold took out the special magnetic pass card that Albani had acquired for him and slid it ever so gently into the slot in Louvaine’s doorknob. There was a barely perceptible sound, something between a snick and a snack. Harold muttered to himself the ancient prayer of the Hunters, “Here goes nothing,” and slid into the room.
Through his goggles he could make out the bed on one side of the room. A dark mound within it. He leveled the pistol. His finger tightened on the trigger. And then the lights came on.
47
Now Harold could see that the dark mound in the bed was Louvaine’s old sleeping bag stuffed with T-shirts. Louvaine himself was seated in a comfortable armchair several feet behind Harold.
“No sudden moves, pardner,” Louvaine said. “I’ve got you covered with my replica Model 1100 semiautomatic 20-gauge Remington shotgun. I’m loaded with 1-ounce loads of Number 8 shot backed by 11.5 grains of Red Dot powder and I’m using full-choke barrels.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Harold asked.
“Because I want you to realize that one bad move and I’ll blow you all over the walls.”
“They’re your walls,” Harold said.
“I’ll have them repainted.” But you could tell he didn’t like the idea.
“I suppose you want me to drop the gun?” Harold asked.
“No, not at all. It’ll look better if I kill you with a gun in your hand. In fact, if you try to let go of that gun I’ll let you have it.”
“What will you do if I don’t drop the gun?”
“I’m still going to kill you,” Louvaine said. “I mean, that’s the whole point of the operation, isn’t it? But first I’m going to gloat.”
Harold thought that over in his methodical way. “Well,” he said at last, “I guess you got the right.”
“But I can’t gloat properly unless I can see your face. Turn slowly, and keep your gun pointed at the floor.”
Harold turned as directed. Louvaine was wearing a white silk dressing gown embroidered with entwined Chinese dragons. He looked comfortable and at peace with himself, as a man might, sitting in his own bedroom with a shotgun trained on an intruder’s midriff.
“I planned it all,” Louvaine said. “Souzer helped me, but only with the details. It was entirely my conception—getting Foote to sell my own personal Treachery Card to that stupid Albani, luring you out here, putting the alarm systems on mock alert so you could get through to my bedroom. The fact is, you never stood a chance against me. That’s because I’m smart. I’m very smart. Admit it, Harold, you’re in a position to know. Aren’t I smart?”
“Yes, you’re smart,” Harold said. He was never one to begrudge giving praise when it was due. “Congratu
lations, Louvaine.”
“Thank you,” Louvaine said.
There was a short uncomfortable silence. Then Louvaine said, “It’s difficult, you know.”
“What is?”
“Killing you this way. With you just standing there. Couldn’t you do something provocative?”
“That’s asking a little too much,” Harold said.
“Yes, I suppose it is. Look, would you mind turning off that damned chameleon suit? It’s getting the light values all wrong and hurting my eyes.”
Harold turned off the chameleon suit and unzipped its front. The thing was really very constricting, and optical fibers don’t absorb sweat worth a damn.
“Well,” Louvaine said, “I guess it’s getting toward that time. Too bad. I’ve become fond of you, Harold, in a remote sort of way.” He lifted the shotgun. Harold stared at him.
“Please don’t stare at me that way,” Louvaine said.
Harold closed his eyes.
“No, that’s no good, either.”
Harold opened his eyes again.
“The fact is, I’ve never had to kill anybody this way. I mean, in all my other kills there’s always been a lot of running around. You know what I mean?”
“I can imagine,” Harold said.
“This really won’t do,” Louvaine said. “Look, suppose you open that window there and make a run for it.”
“What will you do?”
“Wait a second or two, then blow you apart with the shotgun.”
“That’s what I thought,” Harold said. It occurred to him that he could probably get off one shot before Louvaine fired the shotgun. With a little luck he could achieve a draw—both of them dead.
He crossed the room and sat down on Louvaine’s bed. He was calculating that Louvaine might be reluctant to kill him there and have to change the sheets himself, the servants having gone home for the night.
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